Case Number 02323

Storytelling

Every purchase you make through these Amazon links supports DVD Verdict's reviewing efforts. Thank you!

All Rise...

The Charge

Director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness) barges forth with his third
film.

Opening Statement

Why do we watch movies? For that matter, why do we pursue any form of
entertainment? Typically it's to be entertained. Occasionally a creator can
utilize a form of entertainment to get across some sort of point. The very
pretentious American Beauty
attempted to make a film about a mid-life crisis, for example. It the early days
of film, Nazi Germany created numerous propaganda pieces to get across the fact
that the current leadership of Germany was cool. Unfortunately, the message can
be lost if the vehicle fails to entertain the audience. Maybe there's something
to this Shakespeare guy after all.

This brings us to Todd Solondz's third film, Storytelling, a film
split into two very distinct stories that try to hammer home a message with
biting satire and dark humor. I've not seen either of Solondz's other films,
though I've heard very good things about them, and this had me very much looking
forward to Storytelling. All I'll say at this point is that I really hope
his other two films are better than this.

Facts of the Case

In the first story, called "Fiction," Solondz follows the story of
Vi (Selma Blair, Cruel
Intentions, Legally
Blonde), a college student in a writing course who is also sleeping with a
guy inflicted by cerebral palsy for some sort of cheap thrills and so she'll
have something to write about. The writing course is brutal, thanks in no part
to the hard case professor, Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom, The Heist). When Vi
encounters Mr. Scott after hours in a bar, what follows is a bizarre sexual
encounter that should give her plenty of writing material.

The second story, called "Non-Fiction," deals with a shoe salesman
and hack would-be filmmaker, Toby Oxman (Paul Giamatti, Big Fat Liar, Private Parts), who's
involved with making a documentary about "real" suburban life. Toby's
primary subject is the Livingston family, focusing mainly on Scooby (Mark
Webber), a lethargic, ambivalent, bi-sexual, drug-using Gen-Xer whose only
desire in life is to become Conan O'Brien's sidekick. Scooby dreams of fame and
fortune without having any sort of desire to work towards his goals, thinking
that things will just kind of happen. Scooby's lofty plans are not exactly
helped along by his parents, his placating mother Fern (Julie Hagerty, Airplane!) and his heavy-handed father
Marty (John Goodman, The Big
Lebowski, Fallen).

The Evidence

Storytelling is one of those "artsy-fartsy" movies that
"film snobs" seem to like, but after watching Storytelling, I
can't say if they're just saying they like the film so they can seem "down
with it" or "cool." As for myself, I was just simply
"bored" by Storytelling, and this really speaks to what I was
saying earlier, that an unentertaining film will have any message lost to its
audience if they've nodded off. Unfortunately, Storytelling became a
sorry reminder that I was still awake.

The characters in Storytelling are at the real heart of the problems
with the movie, as Solondz seems to have an air of condescension towards each of
the characters he's created. Every person in this film comes across as flat,
one-dimensional, insipid, spiteful and mean-spirited, and there's no good that
can come from a film where there's no protagonist to cheer on and identify with.
If you don't care about the characters, why would you care about what they're
trying to say? Vi looks for cheap thrills without regard to herself or to the
feelings of others. Scooby is every problem Generation X possesses rolled into
one disenfranchised character and expects his 15 minutes to be handed to him.
Mr. Scott is a sexually deviant racist. Scooby's younger brother Mikey displays
the condescending traits of those around him by tormenting and getting the
Livingston housekeeper fired while expecting said housekeeper to be there to
clean up his messes. Toby blatantly rips off images and themes from American Beauty. (It probably
didn't help that I didn't really like American Beauty to begin with.)

Another major problem that I had with Storytelling would be Solondz's
perceptions of what the critics were going to write about Storytelling,
perhaps from shortcomings from his previous works. Characters will do and act in
a certain way, only to have the problems with their behavior (i.e. the problems
with the story) pointed out to them by another character. Toby is taken to task
by his editor (Franka Potente, Run Lola
Run, The Princess And The
Warrior) for ripping off American Beauty, but it's something that the
audience already sees and knows about the character. Is this cleverness on
Solondz's part? It's clever if this happens once, maybe twice in a film, but
when it happens consistently it becomes tiresome. I got the feeling Solondz was
going through a self-congratulatory stage of his career by showing us just how
clever he can be. Characters in "Fiction" are called a cliché by
the other characters with the audience knowing full well that they are, and when
they're not called cliché, they're called vulgar when they're being vulgar.
I can't figure if Solondz was secretly working in some sort of irony or not, but
if he was only he's aware of it.

Solondz tries to get his points in Storytelling across by simply
trying to shock the audience. The sexual encounter between Vi and Mr. Scott is
nothing short of disturbing, and Vi's handicapped boyfriend tries to use his
disability to his advantage in the writing class, hoping that people will like
his stories by taking pity on him. I got the feeling that I was watching Solondz
attempt to become the next John Waters, and while I really am not a fan of
Waters, I can honestly say that Waters can at least be disturbing and creative
at the same time. Or, rather, Waters can at least be entertaining. Solondz
chooses to hit the audience in the face with a shovel to get his point across,
and it's a trait I've never been fond of in any form of entertainment.

Speaking of which, I had a pretty difficult time trying to determine exactly
what Solondz was trying to say. As I mentioned, I got the feeling that Solondz
approached each of these characters with an attitude of condescension, and I
couldn't help but think that these were all people that Solondz knows in some
way and that this was his manner of thumbing his nose at them. Let me relate a
small story about myself. Back during my college days I took a couple of
creative writing courses, with the second one being judiciously governed by a
harsh shrew of a professor who, on the very first day, stated that she detested
genre fiction (D'OH!). I knew I was in for a long semester. One thing that I
observed in the class was that no matter what you did, a character that anybody
created that a reader could identify with, it was instantly cast off as
"cliché," while any attempt to make a non-cliché character
was cast off as unrealistic. Imagine the fun when I called the whole class a
bunch of hypocrites. (At least a one person in the class got my point, and she
was just as fed up as I was.) Anyway, Solondz's writing course depicted in
"Fiction" smacked very deeply of realism, so I couldn't help but think
that his own fragile ego had been disparaged during one of these course and that
Storytelling was his own petty and immature attempt at revenge. Looking
at Storytelling, it's an ugly, unapologetic, in-your-face piece of
writing, being horribly mean-spirited throughout with no discernible point. Or,
if the point was there it was simply too obvious. Perhaps I "got it"
but I simply didn't care. After spending thirty minutes watching
"Fiction" to get to a four-word punchline, my reaction was, "What
the *&$!" And that should honestly be the first words out of anybody's
mouth after watching "Fiction," because after spending thirty minutes
to get to a sentence that isn't funny, poignant, or meaningful in any way (and
one that, due to my previous experience, I saw coming a mile away), you're
definitely not going to be in the mood to watch another hour of a movie.

Other random thoughts I had while watching Storytelling:

• Has John Goodman ever done a bad acting job in anything that
he's been in? Sure, he's done a few bad movies, but he's never acted poorly in
any of them. Goodman is without a doubt the sole high point of
Storytelling.

• As a director and a writer, why would you start a story with a
five minute phone conversation during which only one participant can be heard
and keep only one camera angle? It's amateurish, non-dynamic, and hard on the
eyes of the viewer. This part of the movie was used to establish that Toby is a
pathetic loser and a hack, and I personally could have found at least fifty
other ways to establish this facet of the character.

• Franka Potente definitely looks better with dark hair, or even
with bright red hair. Her turn as a blonde in The Princess and the
Warrior was a bit of a turnoff.

• Mmmmm…Mountain Dew. Mmmmm…Gummi Bears.

• Paul Giamatti always manages to play a rather convincing
schmuck. It might be the whiny, nasally voice, or it might not. He certainly
turned this into gold with Big Fat Liar,
but his defining moment was portraying Pig Vomit in Private Parts.

• When Solondz wrote this script, do you think he wrote in Conan
O'Brien and then begged O'Brien to make an appearance in his film? Or do you
think he got Conan O'Brien to agree to do the film first and then finished the
script? I often wonder the same thing about Being John Malkovich and
consequently wonder if it would have had the same impact if the film had been
called Being Ben Affleck or Being Carrot Top.

The video presentation is a gritty, grimy almost out of focus presentation,
something that was deliberately done by Solondz to give it (I assume) a
"realistic" quality. Instead, it makes the film look pretty much like
what it is: a poorly written and filmed student project. The video transfer may
not look like much, but I won't put the blame on New Line for this one. The
audio is likewise flat despite being a 5.1 channel surround presentation. The
only "special feature" is the ability to see the unrated version of
the film, which, for the record, is the version I watched for this review. If
seamless branching was used to present the unrated version (and I'm not sure if
this is indeed the case), then it was mastered flawlessly with no delays between
the cuts.

Closing Statement

There's a really easy way to determine if Storytelling is the right
movie for you. If you think the premise of a filmmaker blatantly ripping off American Beauty and having another
character tell him that ripping off American Beauty is kind of a dumb
thing to do is a clever idea, then this movie is for you. If you think the above
idea is pretentious and dull, you should probably avoid Storytelling. If
Clint Eastwood can divide the world into those with loaded guns and those who
dig, than I can divide the audience of what will obviously be a very polarizing
film. It's one of those you'll either really love or really hate, and you can
pretty well guess where I fell on the spectrum.

The Verdict

I'd normally say that Storytelling is guilty, but that would be too
much of a cliché.